Category Archives: Doc’s Movie Reviews

Jurassic World: Rebirth

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The seventh film in this franchise was released on Wednesday as Jurassic World: Rebirth found its way into theaters for the Fourth of July weekend.

With Scarlet Johansson and Mahershala Ali leading the cast, Jurassic World: Rebirth resets the franchise after the seemingly final film Jurassic World: Dominion.

It is five years past the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, where it seemed as if the humans and the dinosaurs were going to be living in the same world. Turned out that was not going to work out for the dinos as they found out that living on earth was bad for them and they had to move closer to the equator.

A group of mercenaries led by Zora Bennett (Scarlet Johansson) and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) went to the island where all the worst of the dinosaurs, the weird mutates from the science experiments were cast out in a chance find DNA of certain dino monsters that can help cure diseases.

Also, there was a family who were out sailing (I guess near the equator) and a dinosaur in the water caused their boat to capsize. They also wound up on this mutant monster island (no Godzilla or Kong to be found). The two groups cross paths at the beginning.

While there are so many problems with this movie, I’ll start with some of the good things. I thought there were some good action scenes or dinosaur chases sequences. There was a scene with a dinosaur and a inflatable raft that was fairly tense. Some of the action was pretty good.

I think Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali are charismatic performers and I like cheering for them. Of course, I was cheering for them because I like them as actors, not because they have characters that I enjoyed. We’ll get back to the characters in a bit.

Unfortunately, that was about it for positives for me. I found myself bored quite a bit at the beginning of the movies. I thought these characters were all just bland and one-dimensional and if they weren’t played by familiar and likable faces, I wouldn’t care about these people at all.

The dinosaurs were not really dinosaurs. They are actually just monsters and most of the designs were okay at best. There were several times when you could easily see the green screen. Some of the monsters were cool and looked good on the screen, but just not enough. Give me more of the T-Rex instead.

The film basically had two stories crammed together in the movie that really did not have any crossover. The mercenaries after the DNA is one story and the family stranded on the island is the other. There was not enough story for either one of them, let alone for both.

There are so many moments in this movie that were basically recycled from the original three films, just tweaked a bit. There really was not anything new or original in the movie.

Rupert Friend’s character is right out of the stereotypical playbook for this type of film. You could easily see what this guy was going to do a mile away.

I’m not even going to comment on Delores.

I was very disappointed, but not surprised at Jurassic Park: Rebirths, which is more like Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla and less like Rogue One. Bringing David Koepp back in (who was a writer on the classic and iconic original Jurassic Park) did not help this franchise at all. It did have a few moments that were decent, but certainly not enough for a two hour and fifteen minute slog.

2.6 stars

Deep Cover

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June 30

I have been a fan of improv comedy for decades. From the Christopher Guest films to Whose Line is it Anyway, I have always lapped up improv. So seeing the synopsis of this movie with improv at the heart of it, I was in on Deep Cover.

Sadly, this was a scripted improv comedy/adventure that flied in the face of the artform.

The cast was interesting with Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed. Toss in Sean Bean and Ian McShane to make this cast pretty good.

The main three characters are tossed into a story in London criminal underworld by the police to try to use their improv skills under cover.

I just did not grasp this film. As I said, the idea that the improv is all scripted makes it feel too forced. It seemed all they really had was “Yes, and…” and it did not work for me.

2.4 stars

With that, the June Swoon 4: Two a Day comes to a close. Thirty days and sixty movies! I avoided using any in the theater movies for the “It’s Now” films even though I had set the precedent up that I could. The two a day format was harder than I thought it would be. The last week or so got harder to find the movies to watch and I got in a stretch where there were some bad films. Thankfully, I broke out of that run and finished better.

Absolution

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June 30

We have arrived at the final day for the June Swoon 4: Two Day. The final movie for the 2024 films (“It’s Then, Now”) is a Liam Neeson film called Absolution that I watched on Hulu.

A lot of Liam Neeson films are similar over the last few years and they have titles that are anything but distinct. This movie had the same feel to it. The title “Absolution” seemed just as random as many of the other films. It i snot memorable.

However, Absolution does take some different steps in the story to set itself apart from “Retribution,” “The Ice Road,” “The Marksman,” “Cold Pursuit,” “The Commuter” and such.

According to IMDB, “An aging gangster attempts to reconnect with his children and rectify the mistakes in his past, but the criminal underworld won’t loosen their grip willingly.”

This summary from IMDB does not touch upon the seminal fact of the story that made this Liam Neeson performance different than all the others. Since it is not mentioned here, I will avoid spoiling it and say that this one fact really adds to the typical character that Neeson plays.

Neeson’s co-star was Yolanda Ross and she was excellent in her role. I thought the scenes with Neeson and Ross stood out from the rest of the movie and I wish there had been more of this.

I also liked the young actor Terrence Pulliam, who played Dre, Neeson’s estranged grandson. The two of them also had some good scenes that gave Neeson’s character more depth than it would have had. Pullian does not have a ton of dialogue, but he played the scenes well with his facial features and looks.

Some may think that this story was too slow, but I liked the pace of the film. It gave us a chance to get into the character Neeson was playing and connect with the choices he had made and the regrets that were swallowing him.

There was a series of weird scenes with Neeson and his father (Josh Drennan) that seemed to be in a different movie, but these scenes did not derail the film for me.

Absolution was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I did actually like a lot of what was there. It has a 55% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a shockingly low 32% audience score. I think it is much better than that.

G20

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June 29

The second film of the penultimate day of the 2025 June Swoon was on Amazon Prime and it was an action/political thriller starring Viola Davis called G20.

The G20 is is an international forum of both developing and developed countries which seeks to find solutions to global economic and financial issues. (g20.org). It stands for Group of 20.

This movie has the leaders of the G20 facing a group of terrorists who take over the G20 summit. The leaders looked to President Danielle Sutton (Viola Davis) because she had extensive military service prior to her election. Sutton helped battle the terrorists through the halls of the fictional Grand Diamont Hotel in South Africa.

There is no way around it. This movie is stupid. It is stupid in the way that what Viola Davis does would NEVER be allowed for any sitting US President to do. She is shooting weaponry, fighting hand to hand and battling the forces opposing her. Absolutely NEVER would this happen. So it is as unrealistic as any film could be. It is not unprecedented for a movie president to take on terrorists (for example Harrison Ford in Air Force One), but President Sutton does a whole lot more here.

If you can get past that and just allow the stupidity to get by you, this is not the worst movie I have seen. Silly? Yes. I do like Viola Davis and she carried herself with a swagger in this movie that made you believe that she was the most powerful person on the planet. She does a great job as action hero #1.

Our lead villain was Rutledge, played by Antony Starr. Starr is a much better villain as Homelander in the Boys. Here he feels too much like a dime store Hans Gruber from Die Hard. He had a strange plan involving the world’s currency, making him just an “exceptional thief.”

There is a fun group of ensemble cast including Anthony Anderson, Ramon Rodriguez, Marsai Martin, Elizabeth Marvel, everyone’s favorite Phil Coulson- Clark Gregg, MeeWha Alana Lee, Douglas Hodge, John Hoogenakker, Joseph Steven Yang and Theo Bongani Ndyalvane.

If you can accept this as just a dumb action movie, you might get a kick out of it. If you think of it as a political thriller that features the US president, the flaws come out pretty easily. Viola Davis is a kick ass either way.

The Order

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June 29

The penultimate day of the June Swoon 4 saw me head over to Hulu for a movie listed there called The Order.

The Order was directed by Justin Kurzel and starred Jude Law and Nicolas Hoult in a film dealing with the FBI vs. White Supremacists. This movie is based on the non-fiction novel The Silent Brotherhood: The Chilling Inside Story of America’s Violent, Anti-Government Militia Movement by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt.

According to IMDB, “In 1983, a series of increasingly violent bank robberies, counterfeiting operations and armored car heists frightened communities throughout the Pacific Northwest. As baffled law enforcement agents scrambled for answers, a lone FBI agent (Law), stationed in the sleepy, picturesque town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, came to believe the crimes were not the work of traditional, financially motivated criminals but a group of dangerous domestic terrorists, inspired by a radical, charismatic leader (Hoult), plotting a devastating war against the federal government of the United States.”

I was impressed with the performances of Jude Law and, especially, Nicolas Hoult. Hoult was extremely sinister as leader of the Order, Robert Matthews. Nicolas Hoult lost himself inside this role and delivered a chilling performance. I think this bodes well for Hoult’s soon to be role of Lex Luthor in the upcoming Superman movie in July. Jude Law played well opposite Hoult too.

It is a sad tale that there are people who feel the way these characters do in The Order. I don’t understand why people have to approach others with hate because they have something different about them. Movies like this remind us how far we still have to go.

K-Pop Demon Hunters

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June 28

The new animated musical on Netflix, K-Pop Demon Hunters, had a lot of buzz and because of that, I moved it into the June Swoon. I also was hoping that I could break the streak of disappointing or downright bad movies that I was on.

I am not a fan of K-Pop music. Nothing against it, but I am completely aware of it. It always felt manufactured to me with boy bands and the such.

I have to say, the music of this movie was sensational and worked so well with every note it used.

According to IMDB, “A world-renowned K-Pop girl group, as they balance their lives in the spotlight with their secret identities as bad-ass demon hunters, set against a colorful backdrop of fashion, food, style and the most popular music movement of this generation.”

The animation on the film was superior. It looked fabulous. The imagery and the colors stood out with every shot. The story itself was a little sparse. Yes, it was a fairly typical story of overcoming personal drama to form together with your family.

I am evidence that you do not need to be a K-Pop fan to enjoy this movie. I thought it was really a fun movie that moved at a brisk pace. It looked great, sounded great and had some wonderful action. It has everything.

4.5 stars

Babygirl

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June 28

I was going to go to see Babygirl at the end of last year, but something came up that caused me to not go. At that point, I put it on the list for the June Swoon. It was available on HBO Max and today was the day that I finally watched it.

I just did not like this movie.

According to IMDB, “Romy, the head of a large company, accustomed to managing people, becomes the plaything of young intern Samuel. The rules are simple: she obeys all his orders, and he keeps her secret. But the passion that escapes outside the office threatens to destroy them both.”

I want to start out by saying that this is a truly brave performance by Nicole Kidman. What it exposes to her as an actress is a passion for her work and her commitment to the role. The underlying insecurities of Romy had to be difficult to play and she does it with a flourish.

I did not enjoy the story. I found it dull and I was not interested in all the sex scenes that they showed. The scenes were very intense but I just found most of it uncomfortable.

Antonio Banderas was great in his supporting role. Banderas has been a great performer over the last several years as he has found a bunch of great roles and has excelled in them.

Star Trek: Section 31

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June 27

All I heard from everyone was that Star Trek: Section 31 was terrible. That is was the worst Star Trek movie ever made.

It starred Michelle Yeoh, so it can’t be as bad as they say, right?

Amazingly, somehow, it was worse.

I should have just trusted everyone who said this was terrible.

I pulled this up on Paramount + and it did not take me very long to realize that it may be the worst movie of the year.

I am not a Trekkie, but I can understand why they all despise this movie. It does not feel like a Star Trek movie. It feels like a cheap, low budget sci-fi film with a messy plot and a dirty feel. I would never guess this was a Star Trek movie, except for a few of the mentions, such as a Vulcan. That Vulcan did not act like any Vulcan I ever heard about though. Why did the Vulcan have the bad Irish accent?

The film looked terrible. It was dumb, storywise. The acting was not good, even from the Oscar winner, Michelle Yeoh, who seemed like she was just going through the motions.

Listen to what everyone else tells you. Don’t watch this movie. It is one of the worst of the year.

0.5 stars

M3GAN 2.0

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In 2022, a surprise horror film was released in January involving an AI robot named Megan that turned into a killer. It did not seem like it was going to be anything worthwhile, but turned out to be a big hit and was very entertaining. It became so successful, a sequel felt like it was destined to be released. That sequel was released this weekend.

M3GAN 2.0 was very much different than the original. The original was a horror film whereas this sequel is basically an adventure comedy/tech thriller.

Sadly, this was nowhere near as entertaining as the first M3GAN, as it was much more convoluted and silly. Silly is not a negative overall, as the entire concept does fall into the campy category, but this is not campy enough to make the film more than just a bad movie.

According to IMDB, “Two years after M3GAN’s rampage, her creator, Gemma, resorts to resurrecting her infamous creation in order to take down Amelia, the military-grade weapon who was built by a defense contractor who stole M3GAN’s underlying tech.”

The whole story with Amelia, the other killer robot was messy and nonsensical. These people recreated M3GAN for some reason despite her being a murder robot. The whole mess of the story just did not work for me.

The film was two hours long and that should just never be. Ninety minutes, tops for this. The fight scenes were fine, but shaky at times, which is not a personal favorite.

So much nonsense. I nearly lost my mind when M3GAN broke into a musical number. I mean the dancing earlier at least made some sense narratively. I felt just like Allison Williams did in the scene. She wanted out of there. So did I.

2.0 Stars

Hitpig

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June 27

The June Swoon has been on a bit of a down swing. It happens every year as we go through stretches of movies that are not very good. We’ve been luckier this year than before as we have had some really good films. Then there was Hitpig.

Hitpig was an animated movie from 2024 featuring a strong voice cast with a poor script. The humor is forced, the story is predictable and the dialogue is cringy.

According to IMDB, “Hitpig is a pig hired by humans to bring back their escaped animals. It’s not easy, but it’s a living. His latest hit is Pickles, a naive but vivacious elephant who has escaped the clutches of an evil Vegas showman. Though Hitpig initially sets out to capture the perky pachyderm for big cash, the unlikely pair find themselves on an unexpected adventure criss-crossing the globe that brings out the best in both of them. Set in a futuristic cyberpunk world, Hitpig proves sometimes what we want isn’t what we need. From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Berkeley Breathed’s wild imagination comes an adventure about learning that sometimes what we want isn’t what we need“

The voice cast was stacked. The cast included Jason Sudeikis, Lilly Singh, Flavor Flav, Rainn Wilson, RuPaul, Anitta, Andy Serkis, Hannah Gadsby, Lorraine Ashbourne, and Charlie Adler.

The animation is good and the colors and character designs are well done. Little kids probably will enjoy the bombastic nature of the story and will be distracted by the look. Unfortunately, I need more in an animated movie than this offers.

Until Dawn

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June 26

I have been waiting for this movie to drop price on Fandango at Home before I purchased it. Then, just before the June Swoon is getting read to conclude (four days remaining) Until Dawn went on sale.

After watching it, Until Dawn was not on sale enough.

Based on a 2015 video game, Until Dawn is a survival horror film with a million jump scares and a bunch of horror tropes and cliches.

According to IMDB, “One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening. Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the night again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.“

I couldn’t care any less about these characters. Because I couldn’t care less about them, I was bored as the jeopardy surrounded them. The film was chocked full of jump scares but none of them were anything but your typical jump scare. There as little thought behind them.

The concept itself had some possibility, but it also removed most of the drama, since we knew they would basically return at the end of the night. How did this work? No idea.

And the biggest crime here is that the killings were so dull, I am having trouble remembering any of them. Maybe the film just never grabbed my attention.

I did not like this one and I am glad I did not go to the theater to see it.

2 stars

Your Monster

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June 26

Rom Com- Horror? No way that is going to work.

Except it really does. Your Monster is a surprising film with some deeply troubled characters and an ending that is absolutely wild.

According to IMDB, “After her life falls apart, soft-spoken actress Laura Franco finds her voice again when she meets a terrifying, yet weirdly charming Monster living in her closet. A romantic-comedy-horror film about falling in love with your inner rage.“

Melissa Barrera is Laura Franco and Tommy Dewey is the Monster living in her closet. Unexpectedly, the pair hook up and seem to really get along. However, Laura is dealing with some deep seeded trauma from a relationship with Jacob Sullivan (Edmond Donovan), a writer/director of a play that he had originally written for Laura, only to recast when they broke up.

Laura has plenty of issues in the film, dealing with her own feelings of betrayal and anger. She is clearly not ready for any kind of relationship so, when she walks onto tryouts for the play, things were awkward.

The chemistry between Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey is off the charts and makes the weird story work. If that center relationship did not have the chemistry it did, the film would be a total flop. I was wondering about some of the characteristics of the character of Laura, but it all made sense in the end.

This was unexpectedly good and really became more of a character study. It is the type of film that might require a second viewing to see the subtleties in the story.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse

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June 25

The second film for the June Swoon today is a documentary about the life and career of Art Spiegelman, a comic strip/book writer and cartoonist who you may never have heard about, but a man who has done more to elevate the perception of the graphic novel.

Spiegelman is most well know for his work on the graphic novels Maus I & II, which told the story of the Holocaust and the death camps through anthropomorphic animals. In Maus, the people of Jewish faith were portrayed as mice while Germans (and other Fascists) were shown as cats.

Maus is the first, and currently only, graphic novel that won a Pulitzer Prize and is one of the major factors that allowed a different perspective of graphic novels among the academia. It allowed people to see what kind of stories that was capable of being told in this format.

The doc looked at Spiegelman’s beginnings as a child inspired by Mad magazine and how he wound up working as a cartoonist. They showed his work through the times of the underground comics and included the work of people who inspired him, such as R Crumb.

They outlines how the work on Maus took him years, as he struggled through this very personal story.

I wondered as I watched the doc if it would address the recent controversies of how some schools and libraries have banned Maus from their shelves. The film did have a section on this topic, with Art Spiegelman’s own comments accentuating the fear of what this could mean.

We get several comments, words from Art Spiegelman himself, really showing us who he is as a person as well as a creative force.

4 stars

Chicken for Linda

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I have no idea where this one came from.

I had Chicken for Linda on my list of movies for the June Swoon, but I do not remember where I heard about it. I knew it was an animated movie, but that was about it. I had rented it on Fandango at Home, but when I started it, I realized that it is in French.

According to IMDB, “Linda is unfairly punished by her mother, Paulette, who will do anything to make it up to her. Even a chicken with peppers when she can’t cook. Linda absolutely wants to have the chicken that her father made that day…But there is a strike, a general strike.“

The film is unlike any animated film I have seen. The animation was very stylish and different than I had seen before which was a cool feature of it. The colors made much of the film stand out and each color had a purpose to the characters.

The story was very sweet, and surprisingly deeper than one would expect. It had a lingering sadness to it with plenty of humor and joy to go around. Ridiculous situations occur all around and the animation style served it well.

All this trouble for chicken with peppers?

Revelations

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June 24

The second June Swoon film of the day was on Netflix and it was one that I had to read. What I mean by that is, of course, it is a Korean film and it had the English subtitles for the dialogue.

According to IMDB, “A pastor and a detective, driven by their beliefs, pursue a missing person case, with the pastor seeking retribution after a divine revelation identifies the culprit who abducted his son.“

This was wild. This had a ton of twists and turns as the characters involved all were crazy in some way. The strangest things were happening and I found myself truly engaged with the story. Each character flipped around during the story and I bought everything.

There were a lot of dumb choices made by characters, particularly the pastor, and it built a really strong story.

Like all good Korean films, I forget that I am reading the film as I became even more involved in the movie. It just seems to be natural.

Actor Shin Min-jae stood out among the others in the cast with his crazy performance. Ryu Jun-yeol was also great as the quickly descending pastor.

If you like Korean movies, Revelations would be a decent watch. I was into the film all the way through, even during the moments when I was yelling at the characters.